4/25/2005

Objections Addressed

In my last post on Why Is Christianity the Only Way, I began to answer a question by a secular humanistic Jew:

But how can you be sure that your way is right? What actual, physical proof do you have that says that Christianity is right and Islam (or Judaism, Hinduism, etc.) is wrong? All you have to go on is your faith and your particular holy book. What makes the Bible any more or less true than the Torah or Koran? Why is Jesus any holier than YHWH or Allah? There is no real way to know who is right in religion. Maybe none of the modern religions are right. Maybe Zeus et al. Are sitting up on Mount Olympus right now shaking their heads at us. Until we stop declaring that we are right and nobody else is, the world will constantly be in a state of turmoil. (Oh, and in case you couldn't tell, I'm an secular humanistic Jew.)

I started to answer the last question, why Jesus is holier than other gods (and also said that he was the One True God)*. I touched on just few of many prophecies fulfilled by Jesus, and now will proceed to defend my stance to some regard.

One of the objections to these prophecies (or rather the reasons people give for Christ fulfilling the prophecies) is to say:

Christ purposely fulfilled them to make it look like he was the messiah.

This statement cannot stand, due to the fact that it would be impossible for Christ to decide to fulfill all the prophecies. How could he decide that his mother would be a virgin? How could Jesus choose that he would be born in Bethlehem? And what about the many things that happened around his death? Like his bones that were not broken, the soldiers gambling for his clothes, and even his betrayal for 30 pieces of silver?

So now you may say that the Disciples fabricated the story.

At this point many apologists will ask you if you would die for a lie. And of course you would probably say "no." But there are exceptions. I would go deeper and wonder why a disciple would write a gospel that teaches good, not evil and lies, and still stick a big lie in it. And to top it off, he really would die for that lie.

Now, perhaps you're saying that physics always foretell the future and are correct. Be realistic...They are mostly wrong. But Jesus' record of fulfilling prophecy is absolutely astounding when you look at it.

Many Jews, I would suspect, would tell me that the Disciples misinterpreted the prophecies when they wrote their gospels, especially the one's that seem to refer to Israel, not a messiah. Norm Giesler explains:

"The New Testament did apply certain Old Testament passages to Jesus that were not directly predictive of him. Many scholors see these references as being 'typologically' fulfilled in Christ...in other words, some truth in the passage can approprietly be applied to Christ even though it was not specifially predictive of him. Other scholors say there's a generic meaning in certain Old Testament passages that apply to both Israel and Christ, both of which were called God's 'son.' This is sometimes called a 'double reference view' of prophecy."

Lastly, what if Jesus accidentally fulfilled the prophecies?

The odds of that happening are overwhelmingly slim. Basically, it's impossible...Somewhere around 1 in 1,000,000. It's equal to the number of 1 1/2 inch squares it would take to cover all dry land on the earth. Not going to happen.

We can see that we can rely on these prophecies so far, and next I will look at why we can rely on Christ...Whether he's a liar, a lunatic, or Lord. Stay tuned.